Still in Sydney!

Well, we thought we were at our last day in Sydney, but then things happened.

As we went to the airport I joked to Mary that we should volunteer to be bumped since we have an extra day in San Francisco.  As we neared our boarding time an announcement of a 15 minute delay due to equipment issues was made.  15 minutes later, it became an indeterminate delay. The next announcement was the kicker:  "We're sorry to announce that we have to open up the plane to effect repairs and no alternate aircraft is available.  Your flight has been delayed to 12:30 p.m. tomorrow.  We will bus you to a hotel, provide supper and breakfast before busing you back to the airport.  We apologize for any inconvenience".

I cannot begin to imagine what Qantas had to do to find a hotel with 200+ available rooms and the logistics to move a fairly full 747 load of people to a hotel overnight.

So, we are now staying in Novotel Sydney, right on Darling Harbor!  Talk about a step up from the places I booked!  

So now I just need to call our place in San Francisco to cancel Sunday night since we obviously won't be needing that room.

Our last day in Sydney

Well, the Australia portion of our vacation is at an end. We had some last minute souvenir shopping to do today in Darling Harbor so we got that out of the way in the morning, then got dressed up for the Bjorn Again (ABBA Tribute band) concert at the Opera House.  The concert was good - very energetic - and we enjoyed it a lot, especially attending an event in the Opera House.

After that we took a ferry under the Sydney bridge to the north end of Darling Harbor, found a nice place for supper, then took a bus back to our hotel - and started packing. 

Earlier this week we feared we'd have to ship a package home, but it now looks like everything will fit into our 3 suitcases and we have a spare carry on bag we can use if need be.

So tomorrow is our loooooooong day (36 hours from when we get up until we see a sunset in San Francisco) so that will be a challenge.  Hopefully we can catch a few hours sleep on the plane like we did on the way to Australia.

Visiting the Opera House

This morning Mary and I toured the Sydney Opera House.  It was a very enjoyable and informative tour.  They included several videos about how the design was selected, construction issues, and current issues.  The story was quite amazing as were many of the construction details.

We did see the theater where John Denver performed (which made someone very happy), but were unable to take pictures of it since a band was rehearsing. 

On our way out Mary spotted a poster about an ABBA Concert called Bjorn Again.  She was disappointed that we could not see them in Detroit since they were appearing in June while we were in Australia.  I looked and saw they were performing on June 28th, this coming Saturday.  Since that was a somewhat open day, we bought tickets for the afternoon matinee so now we will actually attend a performance in the Opera House!  Very cool!

Bridge Climb!

Today was my bridge climb.  It was very cool and I'm glad I took the Discovery Tour instead of the traditional one.  The traditional tour walks up the top steel on one side of the bridge and back on the other side.  That's like walking up an 8' wide sidewalk.  The Discover Tour, on the other hand, has you walking on the lower catwalks below the span and you walk next to the steel and granite, close enough to touch it.  Near the top you climb ladders from the lower steel to the top as you can see in this picture. 

The climb was quite exhilarating.  While they took individual pictures, there was lots of time to just lean back against the rail and take in the view.  I'm glad the winds dies down a bit.  In morning when Mary and I were headed to the Opera House, they were around 80 km/hr (50 mph) but by the afternoon they were half that speed. 

The guide took lots of nice pictures, but their pricing was exorbitant so I just bought one of me and got a free group picture. 

So it was a wonderful thing to do once, but not something I'm likely to do again. 

A Day at the Zoo

We spent today at the Toranga Zoo, with Robert and Pat Evans, their grandson, Nathan, and Nathan's parents.  That's Pat with Mary in today's photo with the Opera House and bridge in the background.

It was very interesting spending a day at a zoo with a 3 year old.  Definitely tugs on the "grandparent strings", although someone's were tugged a bit harder than mine.  8-)

Tomorrow we tour the Opera House in the morning and my bridge walk is in the afternoon.  I got this picture of some people at the top of the bridge today.  I sure am looking forward to it!

Note: Picture link has been fixed.

Seeing the Beaches

We got a bit of a late start today after deciding to head to Manly for our first outing in Sydney.  First item of business was to get our 7 day travel passes, then we hopped on a bus and headed to Circular Quay where we caught the ferry to Manly.  This ferry ride came highly recommended since it takes you across most of Sydney harbor and you get great views of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney bridge. 

Manly Beach was beautiful! That's it in the picture.  We enjoyed watching the surfers tackle the large waves. We had lunch there, then took the ferry back to Sydney - and promptly changed our plans to check out Bondi beach since is was such a nice day. Bondi had large waves - a lots of surfers.  After Bondi, we walked along the coast to Tamarama beach, then caught the bus back to Sydney where we visited the Sydney Tower for a top-down view of the city.  

Check out the 5 new pictures in my Australia Picture page (Picassa) album.

So after a long day we're back at our hotel and about ready to head out for some supper. It's been a great day in Sydney!

Back to Sydney

Well, Mary and I are all checked into the the Sullivan's Hotel.  It's not a classy place, but very functional and conveniently located in Sydney.  I do admit that our motels during this trip have been a class (or two) below where Mary and I typically stay, but since we're in motels in Australia for 13 days, I went for "reasonable economy", even so they've run well over $100/day.  You could easily spend $200/day for motels to get "3 star" places and I was not inclined to spend that much.  So we ended up in Cairns having a 2 mile walk into town.  But on the positive front, we sure are getting our exercise!  LOL

We are both very impressed with Qantas!  For example on today's flight which left Cairns at 1:10 and arrived at Sydney at 4:10, we got a lunch!  I had a nice lunch (which came with a bottle of water) but a small can of soda and a cup of tea as well!  We were then surprised when they came around with ice cream bars!  The service is top notch, as well, with luggage arriving very promptly and extremely courteous staff.  I can't recall the last time I had a meal on a US airline - even on a 7 hour flight to Anchorage in 2005;  yet here we get one that didn't even cross a mealtime.  I sure wish they flew in the US...

We've been blessed with excellent weather while in Australia.  Our first 5 days in Newcastle had great weather with the only rainy day being last Sunday, our travel day to Brisbane.  During the 7 days we were in Brisbane and Cairns, we had nothing but sunshine (and lots of wind!) but during those days, the Sydney/Newcastle area had several rainy days.  But now that we're back in Sydney, the 10 day forecast shows nothing but sunshine!  This could have not worked out better if we planned it.

We're going to spend tomorrow getting used to the Sydney transportation system.  We have two bus lines that pick up right in front of our hotel that will take us most places we want to go.  Tomorrow we're going to buy a 7 day bus/ferry/rail pass for the whopping price of $43/person so we don't have to worry about paying fares each day, then take the Manly ferry under the Sydney Bridge to Manly Beach to visit Oceanworld.  

Wednesday is the Taronga Zoo, Thursday, Sydney Tower and the Bridge Climb.  On Friday or Saturday we'll probably take a 1 day Blue Mountain tour. 

So those are our preliminary plans.  Stay tuned for details as we explore Sydney.